Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 9

Where the Streets are Lined with Copper

I found a coin on the sidewalk the other day. It was worth about a dime. I leaped into the air and kicked my heels together. You may think that amount of celebration was unwarranted. At home, in the States, finding a penny or even a nickel is not a rare occurrence. Most people won’t bother to stoop down for anything smaller than a Sacagawea dollar (probably not for that, either). I once spent a day at a theme park with my head down looking for coins. My sister-in-law scoffed and wouldn’t pick a thing up until she found a five dollar bill beneath the balloon squirt. I have often been known to scrounge the pavement at Sonic for that extra eighteen cents change on my slushie and come up far in the black. Wal-Mart paves their parking lots with Lincoln’s likeness. Most people walk over these coins without a glance. You can tell much about the economy of a country by the people’s disdain for engravings of former presidents. So yes, I would be quite foolish to invite my friends over to celebrate the discovery of a lost coin.

Not, however, in Paraguay. Coins are magic. Paper money is wadded and torn and disintegrated in the sweaty palms of a hundred people. Coins, however, contain power in their metal. They brighten days. They bring smiles. They are cherished above all other monies. The boy who raps on your car window at the stoplight may not have eaten for two days. Give him a coin and his pout disappears. He turns cartwheels in front of your car. Pay for your groceries with a hundred and you are frowned at. If you don’t have the coins to equal the change needed, you are spat upon. If you supply exact change, the managers rise up and called you blessed.

My wife once took three dollars worth of coins to pay for a new mop. She poured the coins on the counter. The other cashiers ran over and gazed wide-eyed and opened mouth at the pile of treasure. They gave my wife a laurel crown to wear. I once tried the same thing at a Fred’s. The purple-haired lady glared at me over her spectacles and had me kicked out the door. They tossed the coins into the parking lot.

Paraguayans will part with coins for nothing. If they were made of gold they would not be treated with more reverence. I have counted the church collection many times, in the States and in Paraguay. At home there are always stacks and stacks of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. People enjoy tossing them in the plate and hearing them clatter in the silence. Not once have I counted a coin in a Paraguayan collection. Not one time.

I bought a Coke at a gas station here once. The girl handed me two bills and two pieces of candy--those hard, strange fruit flavored candies that everyone buys for Halloween and no one eats. I stared at them in the palm of my hand.

“What’s this?” I asked. “I’m supposed to get change.”

She smiled at me, as a mother might smile at a child’s question. “Why don’t you just take the candy instead?”

I could not get her to part with my coins.

In the States, the streets are lined with copper. Here they are not. So, I found a coin on the sidewalk the other day. It was worth about a dime. I leaped into the air and kicked my heels together. I had never found one before. I expect to find no more. You will excuse me if I celebrate.